Key scientometric indicators of the journal

Scientometric indicators are increasingly used to assess the activity of scientific journals. Metrics can be used to determine the citation rate of publications, the influence and reputation of a publication, which is especially important when choosing a journal for publication. In our article, we will consider the key scientometric indicators.

Features and significance of scientometric indicators

Scientometric indicators of journals are metrics that are especially important when assessing the authority and productivity of a publication in a specific scientific field.

Usually, these data are taken into account in the following cases:

1. Choosing a journal for publication. In this process, scientometric indicators are among the key aspects that researchers are guided by. Such metrics may reflect the level of authority of the publication, its influence in the field and its position in the ranking among other journals.
2. Publication in Scopus and Web of Science. If it is important for a researcher to publish an article in a journal indexed in a scientometric database, one of the first steps should be to check the publication’s indicators.
3. Assessing the reputation of a journal. Scientometric indicators are among the key aspects worth paying attention to in order not to come across questionable publications. If a journal has strong positions in the Scopus and WoS databases, this may indicate its authority and the quality of the published works.

The most common scientometric indicators

Scientometric indicators and methods of calculating them may differ depending on the journal and the database in which it is indexed. Among the metrics found on many resources, the following can be distinguished:

1. Number of citations – this is an indicator that shows how many times articles from a particular journal have been cited in other scientific works.
2. Journal quartile (Q1-Q4) – this is a metric that reflects the position of a publication in the ranking of the best journals in a particular scientific field. Q1 is assigned to those publications that are in the first 25% of the list, whereas Q4 is assigned to the last 25%. You can find out more about the distribution of quartiles in our article.
3. Percentile – this is an indicator that shows the position of a journal in the ranking of its field as a percentage. That is, the higher the percentile, the better the position the publication holds compared with other journals.

Scientometric indicators of journals in Scopus

In the Scopus database, the following metrics are most often used:

1. CiteScore – this is an indicator that reflects the average number of citations of a publication’s documents over a specific period.
2. Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) – this is a metric that takes into account not only the number of citations, but also the prestige of the publications from which they come. That is, citations from authoritative publications will have a higher value than those from little-known ones.
3. Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) – this is an indicator calculated as the ratio of the number of citations to the number of journal articles over the last 3 years and reflects the level of citation, taking into account the citation characteristics of the field in which the journal specialises.

Scientometric indicators of journals in Web of Science

Journals in Web of Science may be assessed using other metrics, in particular:

1. Journal Impact Factor (JIF) – one of the key scientometric indicators in Journal Citation Reports on the Web of Science platform. It reflects the average number of citations of journal articles over a particular year or period. This metric helps assess the influence of the publication.
2. Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) – this is an indicator that shows the normalised citation impact of a journal, taking into account the characteristics of its scientific field. Thus, comparison of publications from different fields becomes more accurate.

In the academic environment, there is a significant number of scientometric indicators by which the influence of a publication, its productivity and authority can be assessed. Nevertheless, we recommend checking a publication not by one metric, but assessing the journal comprehensively, taking into account all available data.

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